


Pissing in No-Man's Land

by Sab



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street
Genre: 3000-7500 words, M/M, Post-Series, Yuletide, prison!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-25
Updated: 2003-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 08:37:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sab/pseuds/Sab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You got nothing coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pissing in No-Man's Land

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luna/gifts).



> Written for Luna, Yuletide 2003.

Mikey gets yard time tomorrow. Sixty days in he's not technically a new fish anymore, but cause of the lockdown he doesn't have commissary yet, no phone, no yard, no visitors. Just the stupid-ass orange jumpsuit, a toothbrush, a bar of hard soap and a blue plastic mug stamped Maryland House of Correction Annex, Jessup with a drawing of a line of paper doll inmates joined at the ankle. Prison humor. He keeps his stash in his blue plastic tub and when he gets commissary, next week, he'll buy a lock for it. Sixty days in he's already seen too many toothbrushes filed down to shivs. Mikey's always prided himself on his dental hygiene.

New fish gots to eat in they cell, CO Starbuck explains daily. New fish ain't got nothin' coming. Today it's a flat disc of chicken, cookie-cut and breaded, the size and shape of a hockey puck. Mikey shovels it in, cutting it with the flat side of his plastic fork. He eats all the green beans, the styrofoam subdivision of applesauce, drinks all his milk. New fish don't get coffee.

Mikey's got his cell to himself now; his cellie, a weasly pedophile called X-Box took two bullets trying to escape last month and they were all under lockdown till the guards got bored. Mikey puts down his tray and knocks on the air vent below the metal shelf of his bed.

"Yo, Prior," he whispers.

"Hey Fitty, man, wassup?"

Prior - fifteen prior arrests, far and away the fish tank record - has taken a liking to Mikey for no reason he can deduce, and gave him the nickname Fitty as a corruption of fifty-seven Magnum, for Magnum, PI, Mikey's line of work before his incarceration. PIs don't seem to have the rap cops do in the joint, so Mikey's kept that part of his career to himself.

"Just enjoying the gourmay kwee-zine," Mikey grins. "Can you see the yard?"

Mikey's cell's got the requisite tiny window, but his faces the front parking lot and nothing much to see but a lot of state cruisers and a couple of DOC vans behind the razorwire fence. Prior's on the corner and his window faces the yard, and Mikey wants to know if Tim's out there.

Prior laughs, then lets out a hacking cough. "Your boy ain't outside, if that's what you askin'," he says. "Man, you really got a hard-on for that pansy-ass motherfucker."

"Old nemesis," Mikey says. "I haven't seen him in three years, I wanna see how he looks now his ass has been kicked by some hard time."

"Good thing he's in the shoe's all I gots to say," Prior says. "Motherfucker was in with the rest of us I'd show him what happens to cops once they ain't got that badge to protect 'em."

"Yard tomorrow," Mikey says, rapping his knuckles on the vent. "Maybe you'll get your chance."

"STAND FOR COUNT! ON YOUR FEET, ASSHOLES!"

The klaxon blares and Mikey picks up his tray, gets to his feet and moves close enough to the bars to smell CO Starbuck's bean-chili breath as he comes by. The cell door clicks, and Mikey slides it open far enough to set his tray down outside, then pulls back and creaks the door shut behind him.

"ON YOUR GODDAMNED FEET, MOTHERFUCKERS" Starbuck bellows, scraping his stun gun across the bars and turning the corner down the catwalk. "I CAN KEEP YOU FISH LOCKED DOWN FOR ANOTHER THIRTY, NO SKIN OFF MINE, YOU FEEL ME? ARMS DOWN, WEBB!"

Macon Webb's a CI transfer, criminally insane stashed here until a cell opens up at the CI institute downriver. The Annex houses all sorts of fringe lunatics, the lowest scum of the inmate fishpond, crazies, child molesters, cops. Webb's your average yoo-hoo, talks to himself, pisses on the bars, chews holes in his arms and feet. Every time he busts open a new bruise he likes to smear his blood on the walls, hooting triumphantly for a guard to come see his masterpiece.

"You're one sick bastard," Starbuck hisses at Webb, theatrically waving a hand in front of his face like Webb stinks. "Wipe that shit down."

"Freedom! Of! Expression!" Webb shouts, and Mikey can hear Prior and some of the other inmates laughing.

"No such thing as freedom in here," Starbuck says. "I think you got another week in the hole coming."

The klaxon stops and count's over.

"FIVE MINUTES TO LIGHTS OUT!" Starbuck calls with a nod to the CO up in the guard bubble. "I CATCH ANYONE OUTTA BED AND NO YARD PRIVILEGES TOMORROW!"

Mikey grabs for his toothbrush and does a quick once-over his teeth in front of the moldy sink. Another quick once-over for good measure. Takes a leak, washes his hands and dives onto the three-inch-thick mattress with a good two minutes to spare. He kicks a leg out from under the pilly sheet, gotta show some skin for the 3 am count or they'll wake up the whole house, pulls the sheet over his head and listens to the familiar nighttime sounds of Jessup.

He's been here sixty days. Was in holding in Baltimore for a week before that, and before that was the trial.

He knew three days before the trial was over that he was good as gone, and it was then that he started to think about Tim Bayliss. Bayliss was a cop with the Baltimore Homicide squad, tossed in the clink for murdering a perp straight up. Mikey didn't hear much of Tim after that, even less when Lewis and Munch sold the Waterfront and shut down the one sure source of murder cop gossip.

Not that they'd welcomed Mikey in their bar with open arms or anything like that, but after Gee died, after Bayliss went up for murder, the old homicide alums weren't so hung up on their grudges anymore. Even that punk Falsone was civil to Mike now. Or, until the trial, until everybody stopped believing Mike when he insisted he was framed.

But for the last two months, when even his mother stopped taking his calls, he kept thinking of Bayliss. Bayliss, the zen cop, the queerest zen cop you ever met, Bayliss who went up for murder himself. Bayliss would believe Mike. Bayliss, who lived and died a cop would vindicate Mike and the rest of them could go fuck themselves, once and for all.

Jessup buzzes and clinks, the air thick and still with heat off mildewed, rusted pipes and an asbestos ceiling. Nobody talks except Webb, who talks to himself, but there's an audible layer of moans, grunts and groans, the squeak of sweaty skin against the sheer surface of the metal shelf beds. The occasional hiss of piss into a steel bowl, followed by the hot smell of urine in the mossy air. Mikey wraps the sheet closer across his face despite the heat, closes his eyes, and tries to sleep.

"TEN MINUTES ONLY, MOTHERFUCKERS! SHOWER OR PHONE, TEN MINUTES!"

Crapshoot every time, because in this heat everyone wants a shower, even a communal lukewarm drippy one with no time for soap, but everybody wants the phone too, even if it's ten minutes standing in line for twenty seconds on the phone to ask ma to send rolls of quarters, a Bic, a subscription to the Sun.

Mikey strips down while he's in line, jumps under the first open tap and empties the little bottle of antibacterial ooze over his head. Scrubs his hair, his beard - new fish don't get razors - his pits and his crotch, then scrubs again with the hard bar soap till his skin smarts red. The bathroom window's just a barred hole in the wall, and the trickle of breeze on his wet back is a refreshing and welcome chill. He hops on one foot, tugging back on his orange fish suit, and lurches back to his house on the second tier to wait for Starbuck's blessing.

"REC PERIOD! ONE HOUR! ANYBODY CAUGHT WITH CONTRABAND'S GOT A WEEK IN THE HOLE, YOU HEAR? ONE HOUR, FUCKERS!"

Mikey squints in the sun, cups a hand over his eyes and it's the most beautiful day he's ever seen.

Past the razorwire fence, past the second razorwire fence fifty feet beyond the first, past the range of the guards in the gun towers, there's forest, highway, gas stations and shopping malls and civilization and somewhere out there, Baltimore. His first parole hearing's in eight months, and it doesn't seem so far off. He can make eight months.

He traded in his fish suit for the more civilized garb of regular inmates, blue Dickies, denim shirt. They gave him back his Doc Martens and he's got clean socks.

"You want sunglasses?" It's Top Dog, a whiny little pissant from the first tier of the fishtank, got some cred only because it's his third or fourth time through the system and every trip he seems to have better black market contacts than the time before. "Ray Bans? I coo hook you up, cholo." Top Dog's as far from Mexican as Mikey's seen in a white guy. Mikey shakes his head.

He's not part of this, this barter system of rolled cigarettes and tattoos and prostitution. He doesn't need a Bic pen that bad. He wants sunglasses he'll buy his own.

"What up, gee?" Pimp knocks Top Dog on the back of the skull. "You got tailors for me? You want a party in yo butt tonight?"

"I got two decks of tailors, prolly two more after we gets store this afternoon," Top Dog says.

"That'll buy your life insurance this week," Pimp nods, then turns to Mikey. "What about you, Fitty-Sen? Mister Magnum Pee Eye? You had any back door deliveries, or you tight like a virgin pussy?"

"Virgin pussy," Mikey agrees. "I'm saving myself for marriage."

This elicits a great laugh from the crowd that's gathered. "He a comedian!" Pimp bellows, clapping Mikey on the back. Mikey's friend Prior's joined the circle, peering at Mike from under his contraband Ray Bans.

"Fitty got a life insurance policy wit me," Prior says. "He okay."

Mikey nods in Prior's direction. "Thanks, man."

"I'll take them kicks until you can get me this month's payment, aight?"

Mikey sits on the picnic table, bare feet dangling, and surveys the yard. It's a whole ecosystem here, predators and prey, social groups, mating rituals, declarations of war. Mikey's not even sure these guys see the razorwire around them, much less the world beyond it. This is civilization, as far as they know it, uncivilized, feral, ugly as sin. When he can't look at it anymore, he allows himself to look for Bayliss.

Over by the wall there's a handful of guys shooting hoops, shirts against skins. The skins are a patchwork of leathery tans, scars, and spotty tattoos snaking up the legs of their cutoffs and poking out the waistbands, crawling up their bare backs. Spiderwebs, panthers, children's faces, names in Latin script across wiry shoulderblades. Little guy on shirts makes a layup, tall stringbean on skins with tattoos up both legs gets the rebound, sinks a shot before landing solidly on two feet. A Shirt rebounds and Stringbean lunges for him, knocks the ball from his hands, fakes a pass and sinks another shot. The skins hoot and high-five Stringbean. When they peel away, Stringbean stops to catch his breath and makes eye contact with Mikey at the picnic table. Mikey blinks.

Stringbean - Bayliss - says something to his teammates, slaps somebody on the shoulder and then leaves the game, long loping strides as he cuts across the pavement to the table. He's red-brown with suntan, and there's a black outline of a koi fish leaping over a hairless pec. The kid, pasty Timmy Bayliss, is gone, replaced with a hard, lean, lanky inmate with six-pack abs and a crew cut. He's got round wire-rimmed glasses hooked over his ears with a neoprene strap, and his prison-issue Dickies are cut off above the knee, exposing hard, angled calf muscles riddled with Asian character tattoos. He nods at Mikey.

"Hey, Bayliss."

"Kellerman."

"You got some game, there."

Bayliss grins, his teeth surprisingly white. "Been practicing." A beat. "I heard you lost the case," he says. "Welcome to the world of justice."

"Bitch set me up," Mikey says. "My parole hearing's in the spring."

Bayliss shrugs. "Whatever, brother." He jumps up and sits on the table beside Kellerman, all legs and knees and kanji.

"How's it been for you?" Mike asks. "In here."

Bayliss points a chin at the b-ball game, where the skins, down a ringer, are taking a beating. "Those are my boys," he says. "Chomos, a serial rapist, and Whitey there used to work in the House of Representatives. We all done wrong, man. This is my penance."

"First obligation of a prisoner is to escape," Mike says. "We saw enough of that, back in Bawlmer, didn't we?" Bayliss doesn't say anything. Mikey scrutinizes him. "What happened, how come you couldn't make parole?"

"I wasn't up for parole," Bayliss says. "Frank..." He smiles when he says Frank's name. "Frank got me a lawyer, paid for it and everything, but I told him, nah, man." He laughs. "I mean, you and I, we've seen people get off for the lousiest reasons. Now that I'm on this side, I just, I couldn't justify it. You know? Getting off, when I need to serve my time. I earned this time. You feel me?"

Mikey doesn't feel him at all. "Chomos?" he asks, buying time.

"Child molesters," Bayliss explains. "Only thing lower than a Chomo in here's a cop."

"Good thing I'm not a cop," Mike says.

"Once a cop, always a cop," Bayliss says, and pushes off the table with wiry arms to go rejoin his ball game. "You serve justice out there, you gotta serve it in here. Later, Mikey."

"ROLL IT UP!" A big fat CO with his gut hanging over his belt is waving for the former fish to come back inside.

Mikey springs from the table and tosses a last look at Bayliss, back in the b-ball game and oblivious to the world. He slips in beside Prior in line, waiting instructions from the cop with the gut, ready to do what he's got to do for the next eight months and then, screw Bayliss, get the fuck out of here.

"Time to move out of the tank," The Gut says, leading the men two by two up the scaffold stairs. "You got ten minutes to roll it up. And you wanna be tucked in all snug in your new bunks before I get over there, you got work starting tomorrow and I've already got my favorites picked out for latrine duty, but it's never too late to change my mind."

The Gut snorts, holds one nostril and blows a wad of mucus at the concrete floor. "SO ROLL IT UP, ASSHOLES!"

Mikey rolls it up. He drags his blue tub across the yard where Bayliss's team is whupping the other team's ass and the sun's setting behind the Special Housing Unit where the Chomos and cops rest their weary heads.

The new bunk is dormitory-style, which means twelve men to a room instead of two, but the cots have springs and there's a black and white TV bolted in the corner in a pod of plexiglass, tuned in static perpetuity to the all-Jerry-Springer channel. Mikey pulls his tub to the cot next to Top Dog, takes off his muddy socks, and lies back in bed to watch "SISTERS OR LOVERS?" while across the room Prior and the Pimp shout at the screen and spur the girls on to further acts of physical violence.

He reports to the laundry building right after breakfast, which was scrambled eggs and gravy in the mess hall. Mikey had two helpings, and three cups of the best fucking coffee he'd ever had.

"They call you Magnum?" an old guy in a smock and a hairnet nods at Mikey.

"Uh. Yeah."

"Fifty-Seven Magnum," Smockman says. "You new."

"I am new," Mike says. He and Smockman are the only two people in the room, and even the guard in the balcony office doesn't seem to be paying attention. "You, uh, here to train me?"

"Fitty Fitty Fitty-Sen Magnum," Smockman says. "I don't like no PIs, they bad as cops in my book."

Mikey takes a step backwards, bumps into a canvas cart full of greyish towels. "I'll remember that," Mike says.

"Kellerman." He turns around, and of course it's Bayliss, neat as a pin in a white t-shirt tucked into his cutoff Dickies. He's even got a belt, and Mikey wonders where he picked that up.

"Bayliss," Mike squirms, expecting another song about sweet lady justice, his coffee turning sour in his esophagus. "You work here."

"I'm in charge here," Bayliss says, showing all those big white teeth in a grin. "I requested you."

Mike collides with the canvas cart again and Smockman lets out a bark. "Cool," he says. "Whatever. Do I need a...one of those?" An elbow at Smockman.

"Nah," Bayliss says. "Uncle Mercy over there likes the smock. The hairnet too. They're not part of the uniform."

"Whatever," Mike says again. "What do I, where do I start? Just, point me, you know. Whatever." He has no idea why Bayliss is making him so nervous, something about that tight t-shirt and that holier-than-thou smile, but he's feeling his eggs and gravy and he breathes hot laundry air through his nose to steady himself.

"Give you the grand tour of my kingdom first," Bayliss says. "Come on."

Kellerman follows Bayliss down some concrete stairs, and the air gets thicker and hotter and smells more like bleach with every step. Bayliss's little round glasses fog up, and he takes them off and lets them dangle on that neoprene cord around his neck. He stops in front of a line of industrial-size spin dryers.

"Dryers," he says, gesturing with a long thumb.

"Yep," Mike says. They walk a little farther into the laundry dungeon, and everything smells like urine and sweat and chlorine and there's the thump of shoes in the dryer and the hideous buzz of the low-hanging fluorescent lights.

"Washers," Bayliss says, pointing at the washers.

"Okay," Mike says. No guards down here. No windows. Nothing but Bayliss to remind him it's prison at all.

Bayliss turns around, and all of a sudden Mikey's backed up against a chickenwire cage filled with dirty prison blues and streaked boxer shorts. Through the laundry chute in the ceiling he can hear inmates shouting in the dormitory above. He can hear Jerry Springer.

"Mikey, Mikey, Mikey," Bayliss says, a hand on Mikey's shoulder. The wire's hard and bites into his back. "You're new," he says, just like Smockman.

"I am," Mikey agrees. "And I don't plan on sticking around to get old. If you know what I mean. Eight months and I'm outtie."

"Yeah, I know," Bayliss says, all teeth and broad wet tongue. "I know you think so. But that's 'cause you don't know yet. What it is, how incredible it is. To be here."

"I'm okay," Mike says, trying not to inhale Bayliss's breath. "Really, dude."

"Yeah, you're not," Bayliss says, cool and low. "But you will be. Now, turn around, will you?"

"Um."

"It's okay, Mikey," Bayliss says. "It's me. It's Tim. Turn around."

Mike turns around, face up against the green plastic-covered wire of the laundry cage. Someone's orange fish suit blocks one eye. And then Bayliss's long fingers on his waistband, and then his fly's unzipped and his Dickies are down around his ankles and his eyes are closed anyway. Keeps trying not to breathe.

"You're new," Bayliss says. "I want..." Bayliss's fingers on Mikey's ass, and all Mikey can think, surprisingly, is how pale he must be, how pasty-white and innocent under Bayliss's hard, brown hands. "I don't want this to hurt, the first time. I don't want you being somebody's bitch without knowing...without someone showing you, first, it's okay."

"It's not okay," Mikey mutters into someone's pants, and he's not even sure he believes it because Bayliss's cock presses into him and it hurts so much tears spring in his eyes but Bayliss's hands are gentle on his stomach, his chest, and he hasn't been touched like that in a long time.

"You don't know what it's like," Bayliss huffs, lips dangerously close to the top of Mikey's ear. "It's dharma. It's an epiphany. You see. Everything. Different. Clearer, somehow." He whispers, but he's ramming his cock deeper into Mike's prostate with the rhythm of every word, and Mike tosses his head back, despite himself, almost cries out and Bayliss grabs Mikey's hair and they let out simultaneous exhales of something like anguish, and pleasure.

He's sweating, he's crying, and there's no guards or windows but it ain't nothing but prison here, now, a life sentence. He feels it in his gut, in the ache of his hipbones, with Bayliss's powerful, pounding thrusts. Not a bad metaphor, Mike thinks, and his hand grabs for Bayliss's without realizing, pulls Bayliss's palm to his mouth and kisses him, hard. Not a bad metaphor, taking it up the ass for the system.

Could be worse.

Faster, now, and Bayliss is all legs and knees and Mike's got fence in his face and fingers in his hair and pants in his eyes and Bayliss's cock up his ass and he likes it and he screams like a girl and he's laughing and crying like a pansy-ass girl and Bayliss moans.

"Yeah," Bayliss spits. "Yeah. Good. Yeh."

Shudder up his back, and then it's skin peeling from skin, and sweat, and Bayliss grabs Mikey by the shoulders again and turns him around and looks down at him, looks into his eyes, hard.

"You gotta own it," Bayliss says. "This. Your life. All of it. Everything. You gotta own it, Mikey, or you've got nothing in here because they took it all away and you ain't got nothing coming."

Mikey can't speak.

Bayliss smiles. "Okay?"

Mike nods.

"Okay," Bayliss says. "Good. Good." He pulls away and Mike's cold where Bayliss's skin used to be. Bayliss zips up his shorts. "Good."

"Good," Mike says, for this, for everything. He can still hear Jerry Springer upstairs, the nasal voices of Top Dog and No-Mass rooting hard for their redneck champion. Almost like a life. Almost like something. A lot like prison. He looks at Bayliss, at all those big white teeth in that brown face that's not so innocent anymore, but still more innocent than it should be. Happier than it should be, more at peace. Bayliss heads for the stairs.

Not the kind of peace Mikey knows about or cares to know about, but not so bad to be around, he thinks, doing laundry, playing basketball, looking out across that yard to the forests and highways and points beyond. Eight months, or a life sentence, he's Fitty-Seven Magnum. Gotta remember to ask Bayliss what he had to trade for that belt.


End file.
